Hello and thank you for visiting AikiWeb, the
world's most active online Aikido community! This site is home to
over 22,000 aikido practitioners from around the world and covers a
wide range of aikido topics including techniques, philosophy, history,
humor, beginner issues, the marketplace, and more.

If you wish to join in the discussions or use the other advanced
features available, you will need to register first. Registration is
absolutely free and takes only a few minutes to complete so sign up today!

Anyway I am curious as to why someone with no interest in IP/Aiki training would post constantly in the "Internal Training in Aikido" forum. Do you have an axe to grind? If so, why?

It is actually quite difficult to not take your lots insistence that internal power is the true inner secret of Aikido as something of an affront to the practice of people who haven't heard anything about that from legitimate sources.

It is actually quite difficult to not take your lots insistence that internal power is the true inner secret of Aikido as something of an affront to the practice of people who haven't heard anything about that from legitimate sources.

IN other words, your whole purpose of posting here is to act as some "defender of the faith", rather than contributing anything of substance?

That's great, so why was solo training never really a part of Aikido until Tohei cross-trained in a yoga system, and was never a part of Daito ryu until Sagawa found he had too much time on his hands?

I am certainly not saying solo training cannot be a core part of *your* Aikido or that it won't / doesn't work for you or anyone else. It is just that you are expanding the definition of aiki to suit your own needs if you require solo training for IP for aiki.

To clarify some points. First, solo training was part of aikido and trained by Ueshiba. Now, if you are claiming it was not taught, I think we should revise what was said here because that is different. Granted that point, I think you are still talking about someone teaching what they thought was aikido, which leaves the possibility what they thought was aikido is wrong. To the other argument, it could be argued that it is not aiki that is expanding in definition, but rather aikido limiting its definition.

Solo training is a methodology of training to understand the complex body mechanics required to interact with your partner. Kuriowa Sensei referred to this training as "kihon", as in the basics that precede kata or the basics on which kata are built. Kata no kihon was his term for what we curtly call "kata." Not to mention the fact that it opens up the time and convenience of training to expand beyond mat time, which I think is generally a positive thing.

Internal power is real, train-able, and part of aikido. I understand its not everyone's bag and I can appreciate that perspective. It neither changes the fact that you can grab someone and feel what's going on, nor that it has a place in aikido. It's whether it's in your aikido.

IN other words, your whole purpose of posting here is to act as some "defender of the faith", rather than contributing anything of substance?

Hey, the only threads I have bothered with recently are this one - and I posed my view of Aiki - and the Aikido vs Aiki thread, where, if you put yourself in my shoes, what you call "defending the faith" is entirely on topic.

If you guys want to talk about your yinyangs and tai chi stuff I usually leave those alone.

Possibly because no one wanted to learn it. They wanted to do technique - tangible, overt things they could instantly see and quickly understand and do. They didn't want the weird, esoteric stuff the old man was doing and ranting about.

Possibly because no one wanted to learn it. They wanted to do technique - tangible, overt things they could instantly see and quickly understand and do. They didn't want the weird, esoteric stuff the old man was doing and ranting about.

I see aiki as utilizing the neutral points between those opposing forces to produce kuzushi on contact (as well as other effects). An aiki body has such neutral points everywhere, as the result of spiraling, and all supported by the hara. But in order for this to become effective you must build the aiki body, you must develop the right mind/body connections using solo training.

This is why I disagree with those here that say kihon and form are the foundation of aikido.

Ma thought upon this is, that technical the foundation of aikido is mainly daito-ryu.
In daito-ryu there exists a step by step learning process. First you learn techniques, jujutsu. After mastering the techniques you come to aiki-jujutsu and aiki-no-jutsu, a growing understanding of aiki.

In aikido the application of aiki was changed from a more direct and confrontational way, that was designed for knocking down the opponent in the first moment, to hanmi-stance, to circular movements and blending with the ki of the opponent, and to 90 degree angles that were introduced in kihon waza. So it would be reasonable to assume that this things were essentially important for O Sensei, and that his view of aiki was closely linked with the way he performed techniques.

O senseis definition for aiki changed after the war, more and more involving aspects resulting from the omoto-kyo thinking.
For him it might have been neccessary to change to "more peaceful" movements or to apply aiki in a non-confrontational way. Thats why we have to broaden the concept of aiki without to loose its core, in order to take account of the development of aikido.
In the most of the discussions I followed on this matter, this aspect is missing.

In aikido, keiko as we do is also tanren, conditioning of the body. Playing around with techniques a bit is not tanren.
Solo Training of course is also important, but IP is not all what has to be developed. Aikido is still a martial art, in which various physical and sensory abilities have to be developed for handling multiple attackers, such things can only be learned in the different traditional forms of keiko in which physical and mental pressure is built up, not in solo training.
It shouldn't be the aim to be able to do some tricks on somebody who has no real ambition to attack or to defeat. This would be playing with internal body skills, without the spiritual and philosphical dimensions which Ueshibas budo had.

Tada Sensei, who also talks about building the budo body, was doing solo-training 8 hours a day when he was younger , for every practice he did, number of replicates was 1000 (as my teacher Asai Sensei once stated, he saw him do 1000 push-ups).
I know Tada Sensei has enormous inner power and is able to project it in his techniques, all I ever saw him do, was just very powerful aikido.
So I think what underlies the nature of aikido can't be reduced to neither outer nor inner body-skills, they are just tools.
We can go back to jujutsu, or we can go back to daito-ryu aiki. Both I think would not be aikido, although both are foundations of aikido.

It is actually quite difficult to not take your lots insistence that internal power is the true inner secret of Aikido as something of an affront to the practice of people who haven't heard anything about that from legitimate sources.

Who do you consider "legitimate" sources? You realize, I hope, that describing some fairly senior *aikido* teachers as "not legitimate" can also be seen as an affront.

And none of his students ever asked, "What are you doing for all those hours, Sensei?" And he never encouraged them to join him in what he clearly considered a critical practice? Any of them? Ever?

Katherine

That would evidently not be enough for this type of training to be a part of the transmission.

I am not really sure why you don't understand what I am saying. I am just trying to distinguish Osensei's own practice with what he left to us.

Did Ueshiba want to train and develop his own skills? Well obviously.

Did he want to share what he had developed with students? Probably.

Did he want to create a system of instruction that his students could pass on to their students, on and on, for many generations? Yes I believe so. But what was in that system?

Was internal power solo training part of Ueshiba's personal practice? Sure, why not, though I wonder if it is 100% a done deal that this wasn't more important to a religious side of his practice that he didn't see as integral to the martial art. Most people think they were one and the same, so why not.

Was in internal power solo training part of the system Osensei was trying to develop that would be his legacy for his students and his students' students? I think not. Even if, as I think we have started to agree in the margins here, he was basically not a good teacher, and not a good architect of a lasting martial system.

Because if IP solo training was integral to making Aiki happen, AND he understood this AND he wanted it to be a part of Aikido, he'd have everybody stand in a line and do it, every time.

And no, his students wouldn't have stood around deciding they didn't like it or they didn't want to do it. They may have done it poorly but they would have done the exercises and passed them on to their own students.

Every dojo I've ever visited practiced the rowing exercise, irimi-tenkan footwork, and a variety of breathing exercises. Other exercises, too, depending on the dojo.

And yet people are saying that there is no solo training in aikido.

Look closer. Why do you suppose we all do those specific exercises? Are they just warmups, or is there something more interesting going on?

Katherine

There's lots of solo training in Aikido for those that choose to practice it. I think the solo exercises of Aikido are looked upon as warm-up exercises because mostly no one outside of Ki Aikido circles and independent offshoots wants to talk about Ki development as a distinct discipline within Aikido.

It's like we are all trapped in a kitchen and the magnetic poetry kit on the fridge only has the words "demonstrable," "power," "reproducible," "internal," "body skill," "spirals," "intent," "structure," "opposing," and a whole bunch that are just "...".

i remembered attending sessions at Saotome's dojo in FL. we did furitama and he corrected us a few times, explaining that it's not shaking your arms or flexing your leggs, but to "move inside" while pointing at his hara. and how many times have you heard Ikeda sensei said to move your "inside" at his seminars? Saotome sensei told a story of him and O Sensei, who made him do furitama. Saotome sensei was young and wanted to go throwing folks around, so he did furitama but not paying much attention to it. he said O Sensei would yell at him and shown him how to do it right. so Saotome sensei said that it was his duty and obligation to O Sensei that he would pass on the teaching to us. so to say O Sensei didn't teach would be ignoring a lot of information. as i mentioned in my post before, O Sensei was a product of another time and another culture where knowledge transmission was very different. but he also live in a period of change where western education influenced as well. so the old cadre of students ended up with a mixture of eastern and western type of education in term of this time of training. over time, the western education became more dominant. however, the IP training is IHTBF, which worked best with the eastern approach. and it's (IP) not for everyone, just like aikido isn't for everyone. the old teachers knew that, so they only taught to those who had the inclination to it. and this would be true for other arts too.

if one wondered why not all of O Sensei students got the same stuffs, then one can draw some parallel with the current situation in ASU. of all the direct students of Saotome and Ikeda sensei, how many came close to their levels? and why so many variety in levels of those students (i have crossed hands with a few of them)? and the ones with skill level closer to Saotome and Ikeda sensei, how many of them went outside to get it? then you got to ask, why that is? why they couldn't learn that from Saotome and Ikeda sensei?

those thoughts just boggled the mind sometimes.

ps. i didn't get the stuffs from Saotome and Ikeda sensei either. i had to go to outside sources. sort of out sourcing my IP education from some of dark lords of IP sith. i am lost to the dark side. so you can call me Darth Foo (ask Ledyard about the name )

Teaching this stuff with words is difficult. Telling students to "move the hara" is not descriptive enough. You have to tell them -how- to move the hara. This requires a break down of actual physical movements of muscle/connective tissue groups. Very few methods seem to have such an approach, and those that do tend to be Chinese systems. Japanese internal arts still seem to be based largely on feel (with vague terminology that draws on metaphor and analogy to familiar actions, such as rowing or lifting up and setting down a tea tray) and person-to-person transmission through touch. Through this applied sensory-learning approach, an individual eventually is able to replicate the internal actions. But then, the recipient does not have the words to transmit what he now can physically do, and so must also use physical transmission to teach the next person.

i as i mentioned in my post before, O Sensei was a product of another time and another culture where knowledge transmission was very different. but he also live in a period of change where western education influenced as well. so the old cadre of students ended up with a mixture of eastern and western type of education in term of this time of training. over time, the western education became more dominant.

The thing is, Osensei was, himself, actually a product of the period of change. Takeda, or at least Daito ryu, was a product of a period of change. The problems of transmission had been worked out in the Japanese martial arts by the 1500s.

It might be that the real issue is that the "seminar format" that we are all familiar with - teacher is in front of the class, demonstrates something, everyone pairs off and tries to do it - is where things went off the rails. And that was something Takeda came up with, IMO inspired by Sakakibara who realized that if you had warrior skills in the Meiji period and you wanted to make a living, you needed to get heads in the door for a brief time, and give them something that would keep them coming back. Hence the performance art aspect to the aiki arts that was not prevalent in koryu.

It might be that if Ueshiba had just had a small handful of students who he worked with hands on, patiently and repetitively, in paired kata format, not as much would have been lost. Well, except that's how Sagawa dojo worked - how many people came out of there with Sagawa's skills?

By the way, that's another thing. I have never met anyone in any martial art who thinks they met or surpassed their teacher's skill level. Has anybody? It is probably true that nobody in Aikido has ever topped Osensei, but that doesn't mean we should flog ourselves or our traditions for it.

Because if IP solo training was integral to making Aiki happen, AND he understood this AND he wanted it to be a part of Aikido, he'd have everybody stand in a line and do it, every time.
And no, his students wouldn't have stood around deciding they didn't like it or they didn't want to do it. They may have done it poorly

A clip exists (alas I can't find it), in which you can see exactly such kind of a situation.
Ueshiba ständig in front of his students and doing exercises, one that could be interpreted as jumping up, but it istn't.
In another well known he shows some exercises to Terry Dobson who tries to reproduce them.
I remember times when the rites of spring were part of the preperation in the classes of certain teachers.
These and other exercises were directly passed from Ueshiba to his students.

Teaching this stuff with words is difficult. Telling students to "move the hara" is not descriptive enough. You have to tell them -how- to move the hara. This requires a break down of actual physical movements of muscle/connective tissue groups. Very few methods seem to have such an approach, and those that do tend to be Chinese systems. Japanese internal arts still seem to be based largely on feel (with vague terminology that draws on metaphor and analogy to familiar actions, such as rowing or lifting up and setting down a tea tray) and person-to-person transmission through touch. Through this applied sensory-learning approach, an individual eventually is able to replicate the internal actions. But then, the recipient does not have the words to transmit what he now can physically do, and so must also use physical transmission to teach the next person.

Cady, I think I have discussed this with you in the past. my very brief experience with internal Chinese martial arts left me with the impression that training is intellectually driven. The bit of bagua and tai chi I have done involved the teacher instructing me in movements to perform by myself, and offering corrections in the form of images to use as I performed them.

Japanese martial arts are based on the paired kata, and corrections are more utilitarian - your feet should be here, your sword should be held like this, you are still not making that cut right, try again, and look, that did not work, do this instead.

In other words, your own knowledge or understanding is not as important in the learning process. I think trying to graft a Chinese approach onto that is a recipe for extreme confusion, if not disaster.

A clip exists (alas I can't find it), in which you can see exactly such kind of a situation.
Ueshiba ständig in front of his students and doing exercises, one that could be interpreted as jumping up, but it istn't.
In another well known he shows some exercises to Terry Dobson who tries to reproduce them.
I remember times when the rites of spring were part of the preperation in the classes of certain teachers.
These and other exercises were directly passed from Ueshiba to his students.

Yeah I am coming around to this. The fact of the matter is, most Aikido practitioners don't see these things as part of the formalized, systematized curriculum of Aikido, and I still think that Ueshiba bears responsibility for that.

Through this applied sensory-learning approach, an individual eventually is able to replicate the internal actions.

With simple activities like push testing or learning to demonstrate weight underside that "eventually" is actually a pretty short amount of time. Students learn to perform simple internal skills quite early in their training. What takes time is learning to strengthen the simple skills in order to build on them and employ them to perform more complex tasks such as executing technique while standing or in motion without relying on brute force.

Quote:

Cady Goldfield wrote:

But then, the recipient does not have the words to transmit what he now can physically do, and so must also use physical transmission to teach the next person.

True enough. But he does have a rich history of experience to draw on in order to transmit his knowledge to the next generation of students. And once the feelings are learned, the metaphors act like triggers to evoke and reinforce the feelings at later times without having to replicate the transmit via contact process.

Teaching this stuff with words is difficult. Telling students to "move the hara" is not descriptive enough. You have to tell them -how- to move the hara.

Teaching this stuff with impressionistic non-objective words is admittedly tough. But that is a chosen limitation of description -- not an inevitable one.

Quote:

Cady Goldfield wrote:

This requires a break down of actual physical movements of muscle/connective tissue groups. Very few methods seem to have such an approach, and those that do tend to be Chinese systems. Japanese internal arts still seem to be based largely on feel (with vague terminology that draws on metaphor and analogy to familiar actions, such as rowing or lifting up and setting down a tea tray) and person-to-person transmission through touch.Through this applied sensory-learning approach, an individual eventually is able to replicate the internal actions. But then, the recipient does not have the words to transmit what he now can physically do, and so must also use physical transmission to teach the next person.

I agree the Chinese are far better in systematizing their traditional knowledge than the Japanese -- but their systems are based on merely on interconnected correlative relationship systems, with much left to "just-so" presumption and not rigorously isolating empirical causes and effects.

When a system is based on intensely networked correlations (think wu xing) -- then the student is left to sift through all or nearly all the correlative factors in the network or correlation for each and every error he or she is trying to diagnose in any failure to perform in the manner sought. It may be that their use in settings where the network effects ARE the issue remains valid -- and traditional healing is complex enough and successful enough to warrant a decent respect -- with a wary eye. But that is not this.

WE of the West are far better than either of them at objectively systemizing evidence to demonstrate repeatable causes and their effects -- and in terms unsurpassed in any field that it has yet been applied to. China and Japan both owe their present socioeconomic success to adoption of OUR methods.

I urge application of our methods to this -- and that is what I am doing.

Quote:

Ron Ragusa wrote:

What takes time is learning to strengthen the simple skills in order to build on them and employ them to perform more complex tasks such as executing technique while standing or in motion without relying on brute force.

And once the feelings are learned, the metaphors act like triggers to evoke and reinforce the feelings at later times without having to replicate the transmit via contact process.

And a system of metaphor -- may help physical imagery in some situations -- but be hard to translate or apply in other situations just different enough to make such metaphorical imagery not only not helpful -- but often causing additional confusion. It is better if the metaphors were grounded in physical facts -- and then there is a way to relate and understand different metaphors that have proven training value to a concrete basis in the mechanics and physiology of the body.

What is more, I believe all the successful metaphors can be translated or related in these terms. If they are successful, then they must have some meaningful basis in the mechanics and the physiology of the body. The trick is to suss it out. Then ANY and EVERY successful training metaphor or method can be put in a proper system that is both internally consistent and objectively coherent.

Yeah I am coming around to this. The fact of the matter is, most Aikido practitioners don't see these things as part of the formalized, systematized curriculum of Aikido, and I still think that Ueshiba bears responsibility for that.